According to numbers culled from registry reports, 172 of the 435 commercial gTLDs we looked at had fewer domains under management at the start of June than they did a year earlier.

On the bright side, that means the majority of them are still growing, but it’s still a pretty poor showing.

As you might expect, registries with the greatest exposure to the budget and/or Chinese markets were hardest hit over the period.

.wang, .red, .ren, .science and .party all saw DUM decline by six figures. Another 27 gTLDs saw declines of over 10,000 names.

Of the portfolio registries, Famous Four Media, Uniregistry and Afilias saw the steepest falls, each churning through hundreds of thousands of domains.

FFM strings including .science, .party and .date, which are regularly offered for under $0.50 and have terrible renewal rates, were among the biggest losers.

For Afilias, its .red, .blue and .pink combined saw volumes plummet by over 300,000. Its Korean-surname-themed .kim lost 90,000 names over the year.

Much of Uniregistry’s decline, I believe, is due to the expiration of thousands of domains that were essentially registry-owned.

Here’s a list of the top 40 biggest losers.

TLD

May 2016 DUM

May 2017 DUM

Change

wang

1,063,080

647,837

-415,243

red

309,319

51,473

-257,846

ren

305,801

81,840

-223,961

science

332,455

183,626

-148,829

party

243,918

140,063

-103,855

click

242,125

149,179

-92,946

kim

128,052

37,182

-90,870

date

190,506

103,435

-87,071

xn--ses554g

192,076

142,906

-49,170

pink

40,467

7,838

-32,629

property

42,314

13,187

-29,127

blue

41,544

13,386

-28,158

webcam

86,929

58,928

-28,001

work

100,763

76,099

-24,664

flowers

26,035

2,429

-23,606

link

396,611

375,021

-21,590

ninja

54,658

35,671

-18,987

pics

32,870

14,907

-17,963

xn--rhqv96g

22,024

5,271

-16,753

cricket

42,736

26,192

-16,544

black

22,151

5,888

-16,263

audio

24,592

9,396

-15,196

diet

19,321

4,164

-15,157

lol

95,115

80,157

-14,958

xn--3ds443g

65,217

50,628

-14,589

bar

20,183

6,611

-13,572

ooo

18,931

7,047

-11,884

christmas

15,567

3,696

-11,871

help

53,176

42,485

-10,691

rest

12,922

2,768

-10,154

blackfriday

12,393

2,288

-10,105

hosting

16,230

6,461

-9,769

news

76,119

66,754

-9,365

love

27,384

18,125

-9,259

fans

17,965

8,810

-9,155

ink

26,070

17,896

-8,174

xn--fiq228c5hs

47,393

40,289

-7,104

faith

60,045

54,142

-5,903

hiphop

7,622

1,934

-5,688

At the opposite end of the table, the biggest gainers over the 12-month period were .xyz, .loan, .top, .online, .men, .tech, .kiwi, .club, .site and .bid.

Those 10 TLDs all saw volumes increase by over 100,000 names.

But that’s not necessarily hugely encouraging news, for various reasons.

We already know that .xyz is set to lose millions of names over its next couple of monthly registry reports.

One could guess that the peaks in Famous Four strings .bid, .loan and .men are likely to be matched by troughs before long.

.kiwi appears to be on the list due to its waiving the fees on about 200,000 domains, under a deal with a registrar last year.

.club recently said that it only expects to get 10% to 15% renewals on about 700,000 of its million total names.

Finally, .top is widely thought of as the TLD of choice for throwaway spam domains and has already lost a couple million names since June.

Here’s the top 30 gainers from my list:

TLD

May 2016 DUM

May 2017 DUM

Change

xyz

2,896,983

5,995,292

3,098,309

loan

240,642

2,132,895

1,892,253

top

2,494,407

3,876,108

1,381,701

online

305,700

749,097

443,397

men

14,904

299,996

285,092

tech

132,507

339,503

206,996

kiwi

10,997

202,234

191,237

club

790,903

980,327

189,424

site

405,596

535,321

129,725

bid

363,751

470,107

106,356

win

935,609

1,030,099

94,490

website

178,863

268,709

89,846

space

178,852

265,074

86,222

trade

82,215

161,110

78,895

racing

61,553

135,020

73,467

life

38,813

105,906

67,093

accountant

48,135

111,048

62,913

live

47,425

99,988

52,563

host

26,918

65,554

38,636

world

29,999

61,079

31,080

download

72,398

99,901

27,503

xin

326,320

353,639

27,319

design

43,533

68,600

25,067

city

22,793

44,837

22,044

today

53,722

75,158

21,436

press

35,079

55,928

20,849

studio

11,440

29,735

18,295

solutions

52,156

69,628

17,472

email

58,236

70,536

12,300

sale

11,174

22,777

11,603

For the survey, I selected only new gTLDs from the 2012 round that had general availability dates in 2015 or earlier. I excluded any gTLD with Specifications 9 or 13, which act as a dot-brand flag, in their ICANN contract.

The 436 resulting TLDs include both wide-open, commercially available namespaces such as .link and .xyz, and the more restricted zones such as .bank and .law.

Another ccTLD operator has decided to allow registrants to register domains at the second level.

Following a trend that has swept the country-code world over the last few years, Malta’s NIC (Malta) said direct .mt registrations will become available December 1.

Previously, only third-level regs under .com.mt, .org.mt, .net.mt, .edu.mt and .gov.mt were possible.

NIC (Malta) said that existing .mt registrants will be able to claim their matching second-level names for free until the end of November 2020.

That’s a similar policy to the one adopted by Nominet in the UK, one of several ccTLDs to allow “direct” registrations in recent years. Others include New Zealand (.nz), Kenya (.ke) and, possibly but controversially, Australia (.au).

There are no residency requirements to register .mt names. Prices are usually around €20 to €30 per year, but NIC (Malta) said prices will be “halved” come December.

If you’re curious about the second-level policy change opening up new domain hacks, forget about it.

Apart from variations on “dreamt” (which doesn’t even pass a US English spell-check), there are bugger-all words ending in “mt”, according to the various Scrabble-cheating web sites I never use.

.CLUB Domains returned to its new digs in Fort Lauderdale, Florida yesterday to find the building trashed by hurricane Irma.

Fortunately, none of the .club gTLD registry’s 17 employees were hurt during Irma, the category 5 hurricane which lashed Florida over the weekend.

Irma caused at least 10 reported deaths in the state and untold amounts of property damage. Over its full path, close to 50 people have been reported killed.

Chief marketing officer Jeff Sass said that “large parts of the roof had been torn away, exposing our office to devastating wind and rain, pretty much ruining everything”.

“Literally, it looks like a bomb went off. I couldn’t believe the damage. It’s truly a sad day for our company. We feel for everyone affected by this horrible storm and we are very fortunate as all our staff are safe,” CEO Colin Campbell said in a blog post.

Ironically, the building had been scheduled for a refurbishment anyway.

.CLUB plans to use the facility as a tech startup incubator under the brand Startups.club. It had recently been approved for funding by the local Fort Lauderdale government, according to Sass.

None of the company’s registry operations, which are based hundreds of miles north in Virginia, were affected by the damage.

Fellow new gTLD registry MMX is legally based in the thoroughly devastated British Virgin Islands, but has no staff or premises there so was unaffected.

Domain Name Wire is reporting that some registry functions of Anguilla’s .ai ccTLD, also in Irma’s path, were not working in its wake.